


The Restaurant

by marchh



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Food, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Post TFP, Post-Canon, a minor existential crisis, apparently this is a family drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 13,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19719010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchh/pseuds/marchh
Summary: Mycroft and Eurus open a restaurant.





	1. jailbreak

**Author's Note:**

> special mention to [@manirvs for a throwaway mention of mycroft and eurus opening a restaurant](https://manirvs.tumblr.com/post/173966220838/im-the-only-one-who-sees-the-parallel-between), and [@ruususuu](https://ruususuu.tumblr.com/) for feeding the lizardy headcanons

Their parents have gone. Sherlock’s packed up the violin and left as well. The heli should be taking off in a minute and a half.

Mycroft had mentioned some remaining business on the prison island, or something to the effect, taking care to be very droll about it. They took it at face value and barely spared a glance backwards as they left him. Here in this prison. Where he spent a traumatizing night not too long ago.

Mycroft takes another drag from his cigarette, then stubs it out against the concrete wall. It all felt very noir, but that was supposed to be Sherlock’s domain.

Nevermind. What he was about to do next likely lay within Sherlock’s domain as well.

“Eurus,” Mycroft says (as if he were 11 and she were 3 - and a half - and had just stolen and hidden a natural sciences book from his shelves because she knew, somehow, Sherlock would be looking for it). 

She makes no movement to acknowledge that she’s heard him, or that she cares. He takes a step toward the glass, and that catches her attention. She tilts her head, just slightly, still turned a quarter away from him. She can see him just fine, but possibly doesn’t want to give him the courtesy of face time. No, now he’s the one projecting. Eurus likely just doesn’t  _ care. _

He approaches the glass further, laying a hand on it as if to check that it is in tact. Thick, bulletproof panes of glass. A cage that very confines as well as it exposes the specimen inside. Mycroft needn’t to have spent a night in there to realize it would be his worst nightmare. Not for her sort though; Sherlock, Moriarty, Eurus, they craved attention and didn’t care what they suffered to obtain it. Vulnerability was a card trick, for that type. 

Would she notice, then, that the cameras were down?

That no one was watching, except her eldest brother. Was Mycroft audience enough, or would she stop performing?

“Would you like to go for a walk, sister mine?” Her expression doesn’t change. “Stretch your legs, get a bit of fresh air?”

Nobody would expect Mycroft Holmes to orchestrate a jailbreak. Not a civil servant as dutiful as him, oh no. Not the brother who stood by as they locked his own flesh and blood in a facility affectionately referred to as Hell. Not after she so traumatized him.

...not that he was guided entirely by pity.

Eurus finally turns. She tilts her head the other way, and takes a slow step toward him, as if she were the predator and he was the caged rat. 

She tsks. “You’re projecting.”

“Ah. There you are,” Mycroft says. He had wondered about her refusal to speak, but not hard. He thought it best to leave it alone. Eurus was always the most  _ stubborn _ of them all; Sherlock was happy to pout and shout until he got his way, but he had little patience. Eurus could plot and wait and simmer and sulk for days, weeks, months on end. He’d been on the other end of petty vengeance more than once, so long after the offense occured he at first thought she was being spiteful for no reason.

_ Spite _ \- that was what it was.

“Am I?” he asks. He wants to light another cigarette.

She examines the end of a lock of hair, looking so unlike the mechanical being the prison staff were so used to.

“I’m not the one who feels caged and trapped,” Eurus says, emotionless.

“Aren’t you?” There’s nearly laughter in his voice. He eyes the facility. Eurus shrugs.

“I wreak havoc and put Sherlock through hell, and now everyone is bending over backwards to cater to my whims. I’d say I’m better off than you are.”

Was she trying to get a rise out of him?

Mycroft considers it, examining her. No, they had  _ some _ similarities after all.

“My offer is sincere,” he says. The tone is unfeeling, but he means to quell her fears. She’s right to be skeptical; he would be as well, even in the face - especially, perhaps - of an honest way out. Yes, yes the pity was there. But she was right - even Eurus had fared better than he. His job was secure - he knew too much to be let go now, and after the fallout there was no one more suited to clean up the wreckage of Sherrinford than Mycroft himself. The utter lack of any sort of response from his department was perhaps the most unsettling. No reprimand, no condolences. Just quiet.

If he ever had any doubt he was to be locked into his position for life, it would have gone then. 

Family was the same. Why can’t you be the responsible one? How dare you hide our unstable young daughter from us, dangers to herself and our lives be damned? Clearly, it was Mycroft’s fault that now Sherlock had suppressed his memories and suffered emotional carnage. 

Frankly, he thinks he deserves a tiny little respite.

Suddenly, she laughs, and Mycroft realizes he must have been making quite the sour face.

“Are you just now discovering your rebellious phase, big brother?” she asks. She says it to cut him, but he thinks she might just be right. And well, if she doesn’t want the olive branch he’s extending her, damn her as well.

“Perhaps,” Mycroft says, patting his pockets for another cigarette and lighter. “Offer still stands, but not for long. Either pack your things, or don’t. It is entirely up to you, this time.”

She gives him an openly disgruntled look.

“What makes you think you can trust me now?” Eurus asks.

“Nothing,” he says, realizing that pile of ashes had been his last cigarette. “But frankly, I don’t know what I’ll do either.”

He frowns. “Think of it as mutually assured destruction.”

Eurus laughs.


	2. customer service

A violin croons, nestled on a bed of lightly clicking glass and silverware on porcelain, an odd tune that winds its way from the dining room to the front of the hall, where guests emerge from a dark entrance seemingly at random and wait to be seated. 

Bridgette fans herself, a giddy, nervous tick. She grabs the hand of her tech investor boyfriend as she cranes her neck to try to peek beyond the floor-to-ceiling filigree gates. 

“I heard the duchess was here last month,” she whispers. She’s wrong, of course, but people no less famous or important than the duchess have indeed graced the dining establishment.

Brian narrows his eyes, trying vaguely to peek through the filigree as well. 

“It’s some sort of speakeasy?” he asks. That earns him a slap on the arm.

“It’s a restaurant,” she says. He rolls her eyes. Yes, a restaurant, but one that has evidently grown via word of mouth and nothing else. His food blogger girlfriend had handed him a slip of paper with a phone number and pressed him to call. Information had been nearly impossible to obtain. He hadn’t wanted to schedule a dinner at nearly midnight on a Tuesday, especially if he was going through the trouble of making plans a month and a half in advance, but she’d started jumping up and down in a manner that read he had better accept the only available reservation, and immediately. 

“What is this place even  _ called?” _

The hostess levels them a look so icy it sends chills down his spine.

“Your table is ready. If you’ll follow me…”

.

Beyond the wafer-thin black steel gates is possibly the most fantasy-like dining space Bridgette has ever seen. She attended an Alice-in-Wonderland themed tea birthday party once, as a little girl, and delighted in the way her tea changed colors in the cup, and the kitschy printed tablecloths at the small round tables at which they were served. There were paper decorations and enough color that it captured the imagination of a small child, impressing upon them that they had stepped into a world of whimsy.

The restaurant had a similar quality, magic enough that an adult with years of skepticism and reality checks behind them could be swept up into it as well. She notes the details, and itches for a pen as they walk to their seats. She sought out the seams and cracks into the fairy-land illusion, and found herself hard pressed to find any.

The tables were mismatched, on purpose. She passed a table for two that seemed to have been carved from pearl opal, and one that seated five just a few steps away made of mint green stone. The floor itself seemed to be one big, continuous tile but patterned nonetheless, which was impossible. The depth, the height - a lot of things about the space seemed impossible. 

And the  _ people. _ Bridgette was glad they’d dressed up, that the farfetched rumors of celebrities raving about the establishment had served her well. She hadn’t realized dress code was practically ‘fancy dress party.’ There was a woman draped in scales and shimmer enough she was practically a mermaid.

They’re seated at a black-and-white striped table, then the hostess turns on her heel and disappears without another word. No one brings them any menus. Brian looks just as confused as she feels.

She cranes her neck in search of the source of that brightly melancholic violin sound, and finds it the opposite direction she expected. A woman with wild black curls in a breezy linen dress performs in a nook with apparently stellar acoustics. 

It’s only when the song is over and the woman sets her bow down, apparently ready to take a break, that Bridgette realizes several minutes have passed. She looks to Brian to apologize for - something, not dragging him here per se, it’s an  _ experience _ \- but he seems to be enjoying it as well.

Plates arrive.

“We haven’t ordered,” Bridgette manages.

The masked waiter raises an eyebrow at her, and lifts the silver dome off her plate anyway.

It smells  _ amazing. _

“Appetizers,” the waiter says. There’s a beautiful rose on the plate she realizes might be crafted of prawn. “A vegetarian option for the gentlemen, due to his seafood allergy.”

Brian blinks, surprised, wondering if he’d mentioned it in the reservation. Bridgette wonders whether she should be worried about the information they have but were never given - but Brian doesn’t seem to be. 

Bridgette sighs with pleasure. 

It turns out to be good - quite good - there is a sauce used to decorative effect that Bridgette would be embarrassed to admit she kind of wants to lick the remains from the plate.

The plates are whisked away as Bridgette whispers nosy gossip at Brian, who tries to be inconspicuous about looking at the people and things she’s referring to.

The next dish arrives soon after, much quicker than Bridgette expected or is used to. She’s expecting a salad, or possibly the awaited main course. Instead, it is dessert.

“That can’t be all-”

The waiter leaves before she can ask her questions.

“That first dish couldn’t have been it, could it?” she asks Brian, who shrugs. 

It’s a caramelized mascarpone ice cream and there are bits of what she thinks are - bread cubes. Croutons? She tries one; it’s gingery, and cuts through the creamy, pillowy ice like a dream. 

Brian stops short, spoon halfway to mouth, and Bridgette realizes she’s probably been a bit vocal in her appreciation. She’s about to apologize, then stops - partly because it is a bad habit she’s trying to rid of, and partly because there is a tall man crossing the room with a blue reptile of some sort sitting atop his shoulder like some sort of parrot. He disappears behind a dark curtained doorway, separate from the doors she’s seen the waiters coming in and out of, and Bridgette deduces he must be management of some sort. 

She sets down her spoon.

“Wait here,” Bridgette says, and Brian gives her a look that asks where the hell she thinks he might disappear off to. She’s going to get an interview. 

Before she can get up out of her chair, she hears a Mozart pre-aria style pizzicato. The violinist has apparently finished her break and is ready to play once again. No, she can’t let that delay her. She looks up again, and man-who-must-be-management is beside her table.

“Do you need something, miss?” he asks, hands folded behind his back. 

Yes, she wants to say. But in the face of it, she’s a bit intimidated.

“Are you the owner?” she blurts out, surprising even Brian. 

“Yes,” the man says with a frown.

“Can I ask you a few questions?” Bridgette asks, over-excited.

“No,” he replies without preamble. Then he does an about face and once again disappears. 


	3. out of fucks to give

Eurus climbs into the helicopter after Mycroft and he frowns, realizing he’ll need to get her an entire wardrobe. She’s wrapped up in his coat and looking no less insane for it.

...and oddly childish.

She leans over, face against the window, and waits until about 20 minutes into the flight to ask,

“Where are we going?”

There’s no way she _doesn’t_ know, Mycroft thinks. He wonders if her childish act is meant to evoke some brotherly compassion. 

“A plot of land belonging to an 80-year-old farmer,” Mycroft says, leaning back in his seat. He’d purchased it some years ago, intending to convert it to a safehouse. As a result, it’d never officially been on the books, and hadn’t that all just turned out well. He briefly imagines himself planting and pulling up beets. An incongruous picture. Maybe a small herb garden…

Eurus gives him an utterly baffled look.

“You want me to live on a farm.”

“No, Eurus, I am going to live on the farm. You may take off with the cows, for all I care.”

“There are _cows?”_ She’s acting like Mycroft’s the one who is insane. 

He doesn’t know if there are cows. He’s never laid eyes on the farm beyond photographs that’d accompanied the property he purchased. For all he knows, there’ll be a family on the grounds he will have to evict. Perhaps they have livestock. Perhaps it is abandoned, and falling into disrepair (unlikely, if he stops being fantastical for a moment. He’s done due diligence and pays for minimal upkeep).

The helicopter lands in a field a walk from the farmhouse itself, and scares a stray sheep bleating back toward the flock. Eurus looks like she wants to run after it.

Mycroft frowns. As they trudge toward the farmhouse, he has second thoughts.

“Regretting me already?” Eurus asks, several steps ahead of him.

“Yes. If I’m to have a quiet respite from the world, I’ll give up a variety of luxuries,” Mycroft says, eyeing the muddying hem of her trousers with displeasure. This ragamuffin child. He’d packed his own things before the visit, but springing Eurus had been a whim. If she didn’t continually seem so off-footed, he’d wonder if she’d somehow manipulated him into this - and imagine if the illusion were to break all because he found her wardrobe distasteful!

She turns around and rolls her eyes at him.

“I can drive,” she says, the implication being she can go buy her own things. She’s certainly capable of disguise well enough for it.

“Can you?” he asks, surprised. Mycroft, himself, technically _can_ , but. Well he _hasn’t_ , not for ages. (But it’s not something someone like Mycroft just _forgets_. He does have a license. It was a requirement.)

Lo and behold, two days later Eurus ducks out as Mycroft cooks eggs in the morning, and returns in the evening with a variety of things - including clothes. If she has other contraband, he doesn’t deign to ask.

But unfortunately, her shopping trip does not stop her from reappropriating Mycroft’s articles of clothing as her own. A few nights after the shopping trip, Mycroft tosses and turns, chased through his dreams by the hum of an evil sewing machine. His second favorite pair of trousers have disappeared the next day, and now the matching jacket is missing its pair. 

It is a bit, Mycroft suspects, like living with a cat. 

He only sees her at odd hours of the day, the farmhouse being big enough for the two of them to keep to their respective ends of it. She leaves occasionally, and he can’t quite bring himself to worry about where she’s gone or what she’s up to. Forty-odd years of worrying and he’s all worried up. She hasn’t brought any _one_ or any trouble, and that’s all that matters for the moment. She shows up on every so often while he’s cooking, not to partake but just to watch. The meals he sets aside for her seem to disappear on a regular basis, so he’s not too worried about that either. She _could_ be chucking it, but really what was the point.

And she keeps leaving hair all over the house!

They get nearly a month of this oddly peaceful cohabitation until Eurus storms into the big living room and throws herself down on the armchair opposite his with a screeching grunt of frustration.

“UGH!” 

He turns the page in his book, and wonders if she learned that from watching Sherlock.

“I’m so _bored,”_ she whines. “Aren’t you tired of this yet? You don’t even have sheep, the neighbors have sheep. It’s just vegetables and chickens and not a soul in sight.”

“You’re being a _little_ hard on yourself,” Mycroft says, no longer reading though still intent on keeping up appearances. 

She sighs noisily.

“You’re welcome to leave anytime,” Mycroft says, wondering if there’s ever been any question in her mind about it. She’s left often, but never for very long. 

She gives him a very flat look that he ignores.

“You’re bored too,” Eurus says. She’s right, actually. “And I have an idea.”

“Oh an _idea,”_ Mycroft says, eyebrows rising with mock surprise at her _ingenuity_ . “We all know how your _last_ idea turned out.”

Eurus gapes at him, arm swinging down limp from the arm rest.

“Is it really the best thing to do right now, to antagonize me? Your little sister and only friend? The only _soul_ around who could go for help should you throw out your back while digging around in the dirt with your little leaves? Do you want me to leave you to die here? In the dirt?” she asks. When did she get so _noisy?_ He almost preferred it when she was silent. His look says as much, and she narrows her eyes at him.

“Yes, why don’t you. Leave me to die in peace. At least I’ll get some quiet then.” 

“Have you forgotten what I’m capable of?” 

“What, will you burn this house down as well?”

“I can’t believe you’re joking about this!”

Mycroft finally closes his book, setting it down.

“Yes. Aren’t you proud of me?” he asks sweetly, with a sarcastic smile.

“Just a little,” she says honestly. He only realizes then that she has a stick of celery in hand, and has been waving it around for god knows why. She takes a crunching bite out of it and Mycroft grimaces.

“I made eggs, did you eat them?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still hungry?”

“So fussy!”

“That’s disgusting, how can you stand it?”

“What? It’s a vegetable! You grow all sorts of vegetables! I thought they were your friends!” 

Mycroft cringes, from the bottom of his heart. This poor, neglected child.


	4. bait

Mycroft wrinkles his nose at the crumbling brick and dusty interior.

“It just needs a bit of work,” Eurus insists. She’s right, but he isn’t feeling up to that sort of work. 

The location is perfect; nestled right between an upscale part of town and a slummier up-and-coming area. The door was surprisingly hard to find, but Mycroft rather prefers it like that. He thinks maybe they will renovate the interior, but leave the outside looking a bit industrial and dilapidated. Keep the nosy passersby out. The foundation of the building is well built, and the high ceilings make it a bit mysterious.

Drat. He’s already picturing what it would look like after it’s fixed up. 

“I’ll help,” Eurus wheedles.

He signs the papers that afternoon.

. . 

Cooking has only recently become of interest to Mycroft.

It is, perhaps, secondary to the gardening, he thinks as he chops leeks. No, that’s not right. The cooking is, in a way, a proper send off. It’s things coming full circle.

The herbs and vegetables are serving their purpose and fulfilling exactly what they were raised and nurtured to do. There was a poetry to it, and perhaps more importantly, a predictability. No herbs turning around and cutting him because he’d put them into little boxes on the windowsill, or cabbages overdosing on fertilizer, or carrots running off the property because they couldn’t stand that Mycroft insisted on watering them regularly. No, the vegetables responded obediently to his strict but diligent tending to, and in turn were delicious. 

And Mycroft felt it imperative that he handle this final phase well. Why tend painstakingly to a garden only to cook a bad meal? 

It would be, in a way, doing wrong to those little seedlings he had planted, if he carelessly burnt or undercooked them, and proceeded to tolerate his way through a bland meal. Mycroft is determined to savor the fruits, quite literally, of his labor. And he will do so with a nice vintage red.

Eurus takes a seat at the big reclaimed wood dining table as he finishes garnishing his soup.

“I’ve left it on the stove,” Mycroft says. It’s clear she’s here to ogle, not eat. “It will be easier to heat that way; you can serve yourself.”

She’s eyeing the soup with great skepticism, which Mycroft finds funny because he’s never remembered her to be a picky eater (Sherlock, on the other hand…)

“What’s that _for?”_ she asks. He supposes she means the perfectly symmetrical flourish of white cream he’s drizzled atop the dish. 

“Balance,” he says. Mycroft has learned that eating well far out-benefits over-indulging. It went beyond taste and comfort foods with sentimental connotations; a good dish needed to smell as good as it tasted, employ a variety of textures, and, as important as anything, look beautiful. If the dish was by nature monochrome or plain, a festive garnish was a must. Complementary colors, a balance in the sizing of visible ingredients, and the placement itself - it was worth it in the end.

He folds his hands as he contemplates how to explain this to Eurus, but when he looks up he finds that she’s already gotten bored and run off to her end of the house.

. .

Mycroft bookmarks his book, takes off the reading glasses Eurus has yet to tire making fun of, and sets them both aside. 

“I have no wish to run a restaurant,” he says, as she crunches away on her celery stick. 

She makes a face, and Mycroft for an instantly mistakenly assumes it is because she’s realized how disgusting her snack is.

“But you’re cooking _all the time_ ,” she says, ignoring when he interjects. “And when you’re not cooking, you’re nagging your little plants.”

“Nag-!” The nerve. The ungratefulness. Had she not benefited from the deliciousness of a natural garden? He leaves her alone for an hour and she’s gone to forage for celery sticks! A twinge of guilt seizes his heart as he wonders whether her years of incarceration had done away with all sense of taste. 

As if reading his mind (there was no need, his expression said it all), Eurus gives him a very flat look.

“I heard you last week. You were telling your tomatoes to improve their posture,” she accuses.

“And then I braced the stems! What is wrong with my effort to prevent a plant I grew from a seedling from collapsing under its own weight?” Drat! He was supposed to be above such petty arguments. He knew better than to bait her, and now she looks so very smug. 

“My point _is_ ,” she continues, “you’re cooking anyway, so you might as well do it at my restaurant.”

“Of the two of us, I think it’s clear I’m better suited to run the restaurant,” Mycroft mutters without missing a beat.

Oh.

The crunch in the following silence is deafening.

The celery had been a trick!

Mycroft clears his throat and avoids Eurus’s oh so very smug expression as he reaches again for his book. This conversation was over.


	5. heart to heart

Mycroft has already halved the bigger of the small potatoes and chopped up the carrots and has moved onto the onions by the time Eurus walks in.

“Do you miss Sherlock?” she asks, leaning onto the counter in a very teenager-like slouch.

“Why?” he says absently. He can’t quite muster up the dread of suspicion that she has done something to endanger him. Eurus seems preoccupied these days, but in a different way. Mycroft is not anticipating an apocalypse. 

“Oh, I don’t know, villain of the week? Or the little bumps and scrapes he’s always getting himself into?” Eurus says. “His penchant for throwing himself head-first into life-threatening circumstances in order to prove his worth to his bumbling, moronic friends?”

“Oh!” she murmurs, musing aloud. “Do you think  _ he _ misses  _ you? _ Rather, do you think he’s noticed at all? No, he probably doesn’t care, does he?”

Mycroft frowns; he’s not really listening to her words as much as the percussion of the knife on the cutting board. 

“Are you  _ crying?” _ Eurus suddenly asks, tone changing into one of gleeful laughter.

Mycroft glares at her with his red, oniony eyes. She  _ knows _ he’s not, and he’s not about to dignify that with a response. She cackles anyway, and heads back out the kitchen. 

Many more onions are sent to the chopping block after that. Then he starts on the cabbages.

.

Mycroft sees a lot more of Eurus these days. She spends much of her time working on the renovation plans now, which she sketches out on the big dining table.

He leans over her shoulder to look, out of curiosity.

“Keep your big nose out of this,” she says blithely. 

“I’m a founding partner of this venture and I will stick my big nose where I wish,” Mycroft retorts without heat. He taps one of the sample tiles she’s looking at. “This one for the main dining room.”

“I like the smaller print.”

“You can have it. For the bathrooms.”

“The b-!” She turns around so she can glare at him, but his height allows him to avoid looking her in the eye altogether. A wonderful advantage. 

.

It occurs to Mycroft a few days in that Eurus’s sketching and designing in plain sight can’t be merely convenience. If she had wanted to reappropriate the dining table and store it away in her room, he has no doubt she would have done so (as she did with his beautiful waistcoat!). 

Mycroft, oddly touched by her company, starts on a stew he thinks she will like. 

They rarely talk; mostly she complains (about anything from the spoons Mycroft picked to the way his slippers sound when he shuffles around the kitchen) and he makes a few key decisions in their joint venture and asks her to pick up after herself.

Good god, a  _ joint venture. _ He didn’t quite know if Eurus was fit to run a business. None of it seemed quite real yet.

Truth be told, he’s been working very hard not to think about it. Not to think about  _ anything. _ The bitter resentment that wells up when he tries is….not comforting. A little pointless. Mycroft is not interested in having an intimate heart-to-heart with those from whom he has felt a lack of support in the past. He just wants to live his orderly, aesthetically pleasing life. Oh, that was too much garlic.

“How is the menu coming along?” Eurus asks him. 

“What menu?” he says, still staunchly avoidant.

“What, are you just going to serve the guests whatever you feel like making that day?” she snorts.

Mycroft sniffs. He’s not ready to stop being petty over his ego, and go back to thinking about the well-being of civilization.

“Yes,” he says, not meaning it. “They can eat what I like, or they can cook for themselves.”

For some reason, Eurus thinks this is very funny. He ignores her.

“Might be good,” she says later, with her mouth full even as he makes a disgusted face at her. “It’ll seem a bit mysterious”

_ “What _ will? And please for the love of God use a napkin.”

“No menus. No signposting. Ooh they’ll have to solve a puzzle to get in!”

“Yes, the restaurant shall be the best kept secret in London,” Mycroft says sarcastically. “No one will ever find it and we shall have no customers, and no revenue. I see your ability to triangulate foreign attacks has not translated to basic economics.” 

Eurus sets down her spoon to narrow her eyes at him. She says nothing, for a bit, and it turns unsettling very quickly.

“You know what you are?” she asks, voice low. He narrows his eyes in response, really just to hide his nervousness.

“You’re a  _ spoilsport, _ Mycroft Holmes,” Eurus says, shaking her spoon at him.

“Don’t sh- Eurus!” Now there stew on the blueprints. “It’s like living with a barbarian.”

“And whose fault is that.”

“Yours! It’s yours!”


	6. decor

The first thing Mycroft notices when he sets foot into the new space is that she used the tile he picked after all. He smiles at the ground, clearly pleased, before stepping into the main dining hall where the smile gives way to confusion almost immediately.

Eurus has chosen a wide array of furniture likely for their selection, and truth be told he’s not sure he likes any of the styles.

“It’s a bit gaudy, isn’t it?” he tsks, pointing at the solid green table for two with his umbrella. “The wingback chairs I do like...but not for dining, heavens.”

Eurus turns around to look where he’s pointing, stopping before she gets to the kitchen doors.

“Oh those aren’t for choosing, I’ve already bought them,” Eurus said.

“What? Which! Send them back!”

“All of them,” she says, much to his horror. “I like them.”

“They don’t match!”

“They don’t have to, I like them,” she says casually, ending the conversation by disappearing into the kitchen.

.

Once inside the kitchen, Mycroft is considerably less concerned about the state of the dining space. He does a silly little rise on his toes that could almost be mistaken for a hop on entrance, before flitting around the kitchen to examine it himself.

He could picture himself cooking in here - and perhaps that was the point. Eurus has included every nitpicky detail he insisted the kitchen absolutely needed (he was exaggerating; most of them were luxuries he threw her way to get back at her for making fun of his - anything). On top of that, the wood-finish accents have clearly been inspired by the farmhouse kitchen itself.

If he didn’t know better, Mycroft would think he was being bribed.

“What did you do?” he asks.

“Everything you asked! You can’t possibly say this won’t do now,” Eurus snaps. Her voice is distorted, and Mycroft turns to see she has her head inside a freezer.

Come to think of it, there is much more food storage space than they should need. It should seem suspicious - it  _ does _ seem suspicious. The restaurant’s maximum occupancy, judging by the size of the space itself, could be high. But judging by the furniture and what they had agreed to, should be low. Mycroft decides he will hold off, and not ask. He would much prefer to avoid the stress and the row. 

“It’s a good kitchen,” he says instead, sounding even a little sincere. That draws Eurus from her ostrich impression, and she gives him a skeptical, studying look trying to determine whether he means it.

Mycroft tries to look reassuring, and gets ignored for his kind-hearted efforts. Eurus continues on inspecting the freezers, loudly, and it is actually a little bit annoying.

“I can’t possibly use all of these,” he finally says, exasperated.

“Good, I want this one.” Drat! He’d been played again! He was making this far too easy for her, trying to be  _ nice _ . It was not in his nature to be  _ nice. _

“What do you possibly need a walk-in freezer for?” he complains. She has never, not once, offered to help in the kitchen. He certainly doesn’t want her to start  _ now. _

Eurus starts to give him a very deer-in-headlights look and Mycroft shudders, thinking of Sherlock’s own refrigerator. 

“Nevermind. I don’t want to know.”

She looks quite smug at how this has all turned out.

“I won’t even violate any major health codes,” Eurus promises, saying nothing of the minor ones. He does  _ not _ want to know.


	7. eggs

Mycroft squints through his wire-rimmed glasses, for all intents and purposes acting the part of an old fuddly-duddly. He’s dressed in clothes Mycroft Holmes would never be caught dead in, and thus assumes he is safe from anyone who might recognize and otherwise report him (if anyone at all was even  _ looking, _ that is) in London.

Disguise is something he’s expert in, and even enjoys. But he’s seldom done so with a partner - he frowns as Eurus leads him through the market by the arm - especially not a partner that insisted on referring to him as Gram Gram. 

The slight is forgotten, however, as he examines the abundance of produce for sale. Plus it allows him to haggle mercilessly. 

He leaves happily with a crate of mussels in his arms, leaving Eurus to haul the produce along.

“What do you think of raising emus on the farm?” Mycroft asks.

“For  _ what?” _ Eurus grunts along.

“Pasta.”

“Emu...pasta?” she asks. She sounds disturbingly interested. 

“Their  _ eggs. _ Wonderfully rich yolks, almost like custard. A good, eggy pasta. I’ve been  _ obsessed _ with noodles lately, just obsessed.”

His Older Brother senses are so well developed he can tell she’s rolling her eyes even without turning around.

"Ugh. Are you really not going to help me?" Eurus positively whines. She doesn't truly need help, she just likes to make him feel bad. Mycroft looks over his shoulder at her.

"You'd make poor Gram Gram carry cabbages?" he asks, mock affronted. "Horrid child."

.

If Mycroft had any notion of getting Eurus to help in the kitchen, the gift she's left for him on the kitchen counter puts all thought of it from his mind.

She's made him a Japanese-style omelette, no doubt to retort his comment that she probably couldn't even boil an egg. Except, instead of the perfect pointers ellipse, it is shaped….like a tombstone. The inscription in ketchup reads:

_ Here lies Mycrof _

_ His only friends _

_ were vegs  _

His brows knit in consternation. On the one hand, he had harbored a fancy in teaching her how to cook and this would be a wonderful assessment of her skill level. On the other hand, it was not beyond Eurus to have poisoned this for laughs.

Cautiously, he cuts into the omelette and peeks inside. There's a fragrant mushroom rice underneath, which does not quell his fears. It does not negate the presence of poison, no in fact further suggests it, but is tempting all the more so because he suspects Eurus has some basic culinary skill after all (unlike Sherlock, whose crowning dish to this day is a mud pie).

Steeling his resolve (if he died, who was going to draw up the restaurant menu? surely she was not going to risk her pet project now of all times), Mycroft cuts a portion of the rice and egg with his spoon. He takes a bite.

And immediately spits it back out.

"Good God!" He tries in vain to scrape his tongue free of the offending flavors with the spoon, gags. "Eurus!" 

He hears footsteps but sees no offending younger sister pop in. 

Poisoned it was not, but he almost rather wishes a quick death. The ingredients were both overcooked and undercooked, overseasoned and bland. How she managed this medley of disasters was truly prodigious.

She finally enters the kitchen, looking bored.

"You're to stay  _ away _ from the restaurant kitchen. This is non-negotiable," Mycroft rasps, having just downed a great deal of cooking sherry. He doesn’t care if she planned this, meticulously bollocksing up the ingredients for maximum effect. 

"Kay," is her only reply.


	8. advertise

What’s on the menu?” Eurus asks, sauntering into the kitchen and resting her hands on the counter. Mycroft shoos her away with a knife. 

“Beef tartare, badger flame beets with hazelnut miso, and swiss chard,” he says. “And I’m taking the rest of the week off. Tie your hair up, Eurus, honestly, or get away from my kitchen.”

Eurus takes a single step back and he supposes that will be the end of her compromise. 

“Week off? What are you up to?” Eurus asks, sounding half amused.

“Nothing,” Mycroft grumbles. He is looking forward to wrapping himself in the softest alpaca wool and falling into a death like sleep for half a day, and then puttering around the farm for a while longer. He’s been thinking about the conversation with Marco at the farmer’s market, and is seriously considering getting bees for the farm. How lovely it would be to have some honey for his tea.

“We’ve only been open three weeks! Not even a full month!” Eurus protests, voice rising an octave as she realizes he means to bail. Then it lowers again with a threat. “You can’t _possibly_ be running off already.”

He sniffs. 

“I’ll do whatever I please.”

“I’ll burn your farm down with you in it.”

“I thought you were trying to move past your arsonist identity.”

“What’s wrong with the restaurant!”

“I’m tired!” he snaps. 

“Hire a chef!”

“That’s not the point!” It is, actually, the point. He doesn’t want to work with anyone at all, and as a result the establishment has been operating on a very small scale. 

“Alright, it is!” he huffs, amending his statement. “The point of this whole thing is so that we can do whatever we wish, and I wish to wear fuzzy socks and not be disturbed and read a novel of no informational value.”

“Alright,” Eurus assents. He’d expected more protest.

“R-” he catches himself. “I’m not running away.”

“Alright,” she says just as mildly, half shrugging. “See you Sunday.”

.

In the entire month leading up to the restaurant opening, Mycroft had more or less put it out of his mind. He entertained the daily tasks Eurus had taken upon herself to schedule, and even had fun doing so.

He started writing his recipes, just to have the proposed menus neatly side by side. After all, a duck with sugar snapped pears and turnips was lovely, but it would be to the dish’s detriment to have an incongruous dessert like an exotic fruit sorbetto. Mycroft dreamt of hunter-style guinea hens with semolina dumplings and piemontese goat cheese with flatbread, amarena cherries, and pine nuts. During tea he entertained the thought of Ora King Salmon, and ended up fretting over shipment logistics over a scone and whining to Eurus at length. He’s not sure she was even listening, perhaps instead working on a crossword in code. 

He had fun making a dinner in his own home of small pillows of braised rabbit, with taggiasca olives and a beautiful parmigiano reggiano, and brainstormed what salad to serve with it. 

It wasn’t until the very last week that it hit him: he was to be running a restaurant.

“I have no staff!” he exclaimed in the middle of lunch, dropping a pot of boiling water - thankfully though only into the sink. Eurus stares on, delighting in his apparent meltdown. Thank goodness he’d had on oven mitts and an apron, though he cries of a scalded nose. 

“You have me,” she says with humor. He laughs darkly at that.

“No, really, it’s my restaurant too,” Eurus says. Before he can make a biting remark, she continues, “and there’s much more to do than cook.”

He frowns.

“I’ve already done plenty more work than you have,” she points out. He sputters indignantly at that and Eurus walks out before he can get an intelligible sentence out. 

Mycroft pores over menus that night and wakes up with ink smudges on his left cheek. He calms considerably after that first meltdown, but not enough to prevent copious amounts of hand-wringing the entire week.

It just didn’t seem _possible._ An actual restaurant, where he would be cooking for _actual people._ Good heavens, what if someone _recognized him?_

“Literally no one knows who you are,” Eurus tells him. “You have an incredibly forgetful face. Even I forget you’re there sometimes.”

He frowns at that. 

After a day and a half of fretting they’ll never be able to handle the restaurant with just the two of them, and another spent exhaustively calming his nerves, Mycroft feels secure in the fact that he can do this. They only open for dinners, the seating maximum is small, and he will be in the back nearly all of the time.

He bolts awake the next night, suddenly seized with the idea of failure.

“What if no one comes?” he asks, genuinely worried.

Eurus blinks spasmodically at the light he just turned on.

“Wha-” she waves her arms at him as if to swat him like a fly. “There’re like. Hundreds of them on the waitlist.”

Mycroft thinks he mishears.

“I’m sorry, waitlist?” He clears his throat. “And how many?”

She mumbles unintelligently and flops back over, pulling her pillow over her head.

“Eurus?” he prods. He tries, louder, “Eurus?”

“GET OUT OF MY ROOM!” she screams from under the pillow.

.

Mycroft approaches her warily the next time she takes a seat at the dining table.

“What is this about a waitlist?” he asks. It’s plagued him the five hours since he’d run from her room.

“Yeah,” she says.

“What?” This does not dispel his confusion. 

She looks up from her work with a flat expression.

“There are hundreds of people waiting for a seat,” she explains, as if he were particularly daft. 

“Hun...dreds?” he narrows his eyes, wondering whether she was mentally unfit to be out and about after all. Then it occurs to him-

“Did you _advertise?”_ he asks in a tone that suggests perhaps blasphemy.

She wrinkles her nose. 

“Not traditionally. I did tell my followers there was a cool place that opened in London though, and some of the more clever ones seemed to have solved the puzzle I planted in various food publications and Google maps,” she says.

Nevermind the puzzle. “Followers?”

“Twitter,” she says. It’s eerie how much like Sherlock she sounds as she says it. Mycroft is having traumatic flashbacks of being told off by an eye-rolling teenage brother who thinks Mycroft is “so uncool.” 

He frowns deeply, stuck in his thoughts.

“You have hundreds of followers,” he says aloud - this was - not ideal, but not the end of the world. She couldn’t have been using social media for that long if she only had _hundreds_ ; it was unlikely his request for her assistance some years ago was the cause of this. And she was clever enough to take the precautions that would prevent one of them - Sherlock, mainly - from tracking her (them).

She blinks up at him.

“I’ve two million followers,” she says.

Mycroft does a spit take. 


	9. nice day for murder

Eurus sits on a public bench, packed lunch on her lap. Mycroft had put whatever he made into a ridiculous box and put the ridiculous box into a ridiculous pouch. Eurus wonders if he’s deduced what she’s up to. If so, his acting has improved. He’s a lot calmer these days.

From where she’s sitting, she can see the dozens of people dining at the cafe across. Eurus can’t say she really believes in the appeal of food but she understand why other people find it so. Culturally it’s become elevated to a pseudo-art. It’s cheaper than a ticket to an opera and lasts only as much as you want. The ever changing fashions give you something to look forward to, something new to try. Eat enough ethnic cuisine and you’ll even feel somewhat cultured, even if you’ve never heard a single Bach partita performed live. It’s even less effort than sex, intellectually and physically.

“That looks delicious.”

Eurus opens her mouth and lets the half-chewed food fall out, an expression of her disgust ad the fact that some idiot thought it was alright to sit on the same bench as her.

She looks over to find a middle aged man, possibly a decade older than Mycroft, wearing a stupid hat and stupid glasses. He’s peering over at her lunch box, and if he’s disturbed by her lack of manners he doesn’t show it.

“Are you a picky eater?” the nosy stranger asks. Eurus imagines four ways to kill him with her spoon.

“Japanese mothers would cut a variety of foods into cute shapes for young children, to broaden their palates,” he goes on explaining.

Mycroft had indeed cut up an array of vegetables into stupid, bite-sized shapes. 

“Though perhaps not to this stunning degree. The mix of textures and preparation methods is quite a lot.”

Were all middle aged men like this?

“I’ll give you the lunchbox if you never speak to me again, how’s that?” Eurus asks. She wonders whether Mycroft would be more upset if she killed someone or if she gave away his ridiculous lunch box. He was so fussy nowadays it was hard to tell.

“I’m sorry, but you’ve already spit all over it,” he replies gently. “Had you made the offer two minutes ago I might not be averse.”

Eurus suppresses a sigh.

“You work for a newspaper that tries desperately to cling onto its veneer of professionalism despite having succumbed to tabloid methods and stories years ago. But you’ll scarcely get the opportunity to do what you do for your current paycheck anywhere else. Your obsession with what you eat isn’t nearly as endearing as you imagine. I can assure you your wife does not enjoy the history lessons one bit when you decide to lecture on about the history of livestock domestication or spices whenever she serves you a meal. God knows she’s only stayed with you so long because she’s lazy.”

When she looks up again, he’s gone.

Eurus takes another bite of her vegetables and scoffs. She is the _least_ picky eater Mycroft knows.

Across the street, a blonde woman leans oer her partner’s soup before getting up and walking away. She makes it to the back of the restaurant before he turns blue, and collapses without a sound.

Eurus’s eyebrows go up. It takes another few moments before people start to take notice. And older lady covers her scream. A waitress calls for an ambulance It’ll look like he choked but Eurus knows better. The blonde was a professional. 

Eurus shovels the rest of her lunch into her mouth as she schemes. Maybe food wasn’t so boring after all.


	10. the freezer of betrayal

Monday is Mycroft’s version of a tapas day, with small plates in a long, multi-course extravaganza. He makes foie gras tarts glazed with strawberries and celery, french white asaragus with roasted pears and white sorrel, and sea urchin with a sort of green apple cloud, lighter than a foam, and some caviar for garnish. 

Tuesday is his long-awaited seafood day. There is Madai snapper with smoked dashi and grated radish, a rather traditional fare, and then there is the autéed striped bass with English peas and caramelized spring onions.

Wednesday Mycroft decides to take a break - an utter necessity to revitalize the creative spirit. 

Thursday he opens for brunch on a whim, having a hankering for eggs. 

Friday is dinner again, but late midnight. He has a sweet tooth that day, and the menu is full of dessert - chevre mousse with raspberry coulis, passionfruit meringue with sweet green pea sorbet, and a decadent black forest cake with kirsch chantilly.

The floor is full each night (each night he opens the kitchen, anyway) and it’s a wonder they haven’t been closed down yet.

Mycroft can only imagine who Eurus has bought off or whether she’s already emptied his coffers to fund this frivolous whim. He can’t exactly say he hasn’t encouraged it, what with the ridiculous ingredients she’s managed to have flown in for him.

He stops whipping egg whites for a moment to wonder whether he’s done her an injustice by thinking the worst - no, that was to be expected when it came to someone who burned your childhood home down, of course (those poor first editions in the library. and the trauma), and put you through a traumatic, life-threatening decision as an extra. 

But she’s just been so _decent_ (if bratty) recently that he feels she must be setting him up to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Or _worse,_ she has truly reformed, and so quickly! So simply. No one would have thought it possible.

Worse yet, is her assumed decency only due to the fact that she has been venting her vices elsewhere?

Mycroft shuffers, as his inclination has been toward denial all these weeks.

He sets the egg white down, all ready. 

Mycroft truly hadn’t expected her to stick around, and now feels rather guilty that she has. If he is being honest, he expected her to go on wreaking havoc somewhere, and prove that his existence was not so useless after all. A horrid way for an older brother to behave, honestly. He takes his guilt out on making her lovely lunches for her day trips no doubt traipsing around the country doing God knows what. 

The handcrafted nature of cooking and the ever changing menu keeps both his body and mind too active to drown too deep in guilt - though the alternative is that he was correct and Eurus is up to no good, except now he was an accessory.

Both were bad, bad options.

A horrid older brother indeed!

Mycroft huffs. Where were his cherries? He crossed the kitchen to check into his produce refrigerator, and stops before Eurus’s mysterious freezer.

He said he didn’t want to know, but - well, he had to, didn’t he? It was his responsibility. He’d already put this off several weeks, and it just wouldn’t do to turn a blind eye any longer.

Taking a deep breath, Mycroft takes the handlebars in hand, and pulls.

A puff of hot, muggy air hits his face - it’s not a freezer at all! - and he blows out air as he scrunches up his face.

It’s full of plants.

Not produce - not his fruits and veggies, oh no they were _flowers_ . He scans the massive converted-freezer and finds several dozen pots, nearly a dozen varieties. Good God, these were _orchids_ , and not just typical ones but _illegal, endangered_ orchids that there was no way she brought in through customs! 

Heavens, what was she doing with - no, he knew well enough that he needed to stop pretending.

Eurus had been funding their venture with illegal trade, transporting species that somebody had probably killed for. The jungles in which some of these orchids were found were not easy to traverse. Oh God, the restaurant had been a front, a money laundering scheme-

Mycroft gasps, staggering back from the converted hothouse.

“Eurus!!”

An accessory to money laundering! He’d been a fool! Oh, to trust his sister so easily, what a foolish, foolish thing to do.

Mummy was right, he wasn’t very intelligent at all!

So naive!

Eurus pokes her head into the kitchen and upon seeing his discovery frowns.

“Keep the door closed,” she admonishes him, interrupting his spiral of guilt and melanchly.

.

Mycroft has a cold towel strewn over his eyes as he sits slouched back against his kitchen counter.

“I cannot deal with this,” he says, sounding dramatically wounded. “I need a week.”

Eurus’s jaw drops.

“A week! You just had a week!”

“I need another one,” he insists.

“What kind of business owner are you!” she exclaims, clearly disappointed in him. Mycroft’s lower lip wobbles.

“Clearly not a business owner at all. What do you care! You’ll just make up the difference with your plant trafficking,” he says, bordering on whining. He makes no mention of the fact that he can glean, close enough to accurate, just how much the flowers had cost her to transport and what sort of profit margins she may be looking at. It seems Eurus has been working on this quite a while, perhaps even before pitching him this ridiculous restaurant venture. He’s suddenly keenly aware of the shipments she’s been receiving at the restaurant that have nothing to do with food. Well, well, she’s set up quite the illegal network for herself, hasn’t she. Sherlock would be impressed. Mycroft is decidedly not.

“That’s true,” she muses, coming around to the idea. “The waitlist hasn’t gotten any shorter, but it’s not a bad thing - there’s so much hype. People who don’t even know where we’re located keep blogging about us.”

Mycroft shudders. He abhors the idea of being _blogged about._

“One week won’t hurt-”

“I may need more than a week,” he interjects.

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” she says, as if Mycroft were the child.

“Oh will I _ever_ recover from this _betrayal,”_ Mycroft says loudly. 

“Oh please.”

“My sister, my own blood and flesh, has used me, lied straight to my face, under my roof, all to advance her own career! You have broken the vestiges of my shriveled, shrunken heart - it’s gone now, nothing but dust,” Mycroft laments.

Eurus slaps a pot with a spatula, having had enough.

“Stop whining!" She punctuates each syllable with a slap.

"It’s not like you didn’t use me too, letting me walk free from Sherrinford,” she grumbles.

He sits up with a gasp, towel falling from his eyes.

“A year ago it was all, _oh_ Eurus isn’t fit to walk amongst men! What if she hurts someone? What if she hurts herself??” She picks up two knives, one in each hand. “And now you’ve let me loose on the world, you hypocrite!”

“Oh and don’t say it’s because you felt _sorry_ for what you had done, no, you felt _sorry_ for _yourself,_ you weren’t thinking of me at all, you never do!”

“You’re one to talk,” Mycroft can’t help but mutter, arms crossed, even though she is wielding two very sharp objects. 

“Is this about my little game? Get over it! You’re older, you _know_ you never played with me as much as Sherlock did, of course he’s my favorite.”

Mycroft puts on a very affected look of injury at that.

_“So_ ungrateful,” he tsks.

“You as well.” Eurus crosses her arms. 

Mycroft grimaces.

“Can you put down the knives?” he asks.

She stares him down for another long moment, and then points one of them straight at his nose.

“Leave my freezer alone.”

“It’s not even a freezer anymore,” he protests, because it’s in his nature to get hung up over details.

She scowls.

“I won’t stop even if you say.”

“I haven’t _said_ anything!”

Eurus gives him a long, incredulous look, then mimics his dramatic lamentations from moment before.

“I’m Mycroft and I’m sad because no one loves me! Everyone forgot my birthday last year except Eurus, and only because I reminded her!”

“Alright, enough!”

She clears her throat. 

“You won’t make me stop, then,” she says, half a question.

He gives her a big exasperated sigh and gesture. 

“You wouldn’t listen anyway.”

“Of course not.”

“And I did say get a job, right before - this.”

“You did.”

“I suppose it was very entrepreneurial of you, if a bit misguided.”

“I have contacts in 140 cities.”

“I don’t need to know this.”

“It’s a very exciting market.”

“Please stop talking now.”


	11. call the police

Mycroft hums happily as he signs for his shipment of aged, imported cheeses, except once he sees the boxes inside the truck, he can deduce immediately that these are not his cheeses at all.

.

He frowns, and has good reason to.

Not only has Eurus been lax about keeping her legal and illegal businesses separate, but now instead of cheeses he’s got a kitchen full of contraband!

He rips the lid off one such box angrily, and stops short. He presses his lips into a thin line. 

Eurus has apparently stepped up from plants.

Inside the box is big branch, a habitat of sorts, where three small lizards of a green-blue hue laze around. Turquoise dwarf geckos - critically endangered and illegal to catch from the wild (and notoriously difficult to breed in captivity).

The bluest of the trio catches his eye - Mycroft’s expression changes immediately, eyes widening in mild surprise. 

He lowers his hand next to the little reptile, who apparently deems it a worthy perch and climbs on.

“Oh hello there!” Mycroft whispers. “Look at you, aren’t you just the most marvelous creature.”

“Would you like a tour of the kitchen? Well, come along then.”

.

Eurus frowns at her brother, who has been happily boiling a tomato sauce with her merchandise in his breast pocket.

“That’s like half a million pounds there Mycroft, you have to put it back,” she says.

“No.”

“You can’t do that,” she says, baffled.

“What are you going to do, report me to the police?” he asks. 

“Now you’re just being mean,” she gasps.

Mycroft looks up in a panic at that.

“You do it all the time!”

“That’s true…” She sounds skeptical.

He sniffs.

“And yes I very well can keep it,” he says, brandishing an envelope. “I’ve got one of these little certificates you’ve made up and everything, seeing as these little adorable creatures are meant to be registered every three years.”

“You’re disgusting,” Eurus comments with some fascination.

“And you are very rude.”

"Just don't drop him into a boiling pot."

"Eurus!"

.

Sherlock throws the doors open to Lestrade’s office only to find him still on his mobile, pacing the office. Sherlock narrows his eyes at the phone, tracking his movements from his position in the doorway.

“I’ve been calling you all morning,” he says. “And the line’s been  _ busy.” _

Lestrade points to the phone by his ear.

“Sorry Sherlock, I’m on hold,” he says.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Don’t need to be a genius to see that.”

“It’s these damned reservations,” Lestrade sighs, taking a seat on the edge of his desk.

Sherlock sniffs haughtily.

“First date went well, I see.”

“Yeah,” Lestrade says dreamily.

Sherlock wrinkles his nose. “And now you’re trying to impress her.”

Lestrade starts to scratch himself as if he’s got hives - nope not hives, a business card, evidently. He sets the black card on the desk for Sherlock to read.

Nothing but gold filigree and a phone number preceded by the word “call.” Bit of a Jazz Age aesthetic. He flips it over, runs his fingers along the sides, and sniffs it. Licks it.

“Ugh, Sherlock!” 

“Custom made, very posh. A restaurant, though the card doesn’t otherwise indicate it in writing. Curious.”

“Yeah?” Lestrade says with a sigh. He turns the phone on speaker and places it down on the desk. “I’ve been trying on and off all day and haven’t gotten a spot.”

Sherlock looks at Graham with great distaste. 

“The lengths people go through for sex.”

He sputters at that, as Sherlock intended.

“What’s it called?” Sherlock asks.

Gavin’s hesitation is curious.

“Where is it?” he asks. George scratches his nose in a most evasive way.

Sherlock sits back in his seat, leveling an incredulous stare at him.

“You don’t get the information until after you get on the line,” Lestrade protests. “But it’s the hottest restaurant in town, and she mentioned it twice the two times we’ve met and I thought….”

Sherlock peers at the card again. Ah yes. Mrs. Hudson had mentioned something to that effect, and Sherlock pushed it away to the back of his mind as useless information suitable for incineration. Perhaps not so useless after all. The mysterious establishment had seized London like a fever despite no one knowing anything about it. Classic case of Emperor’s new clothes as any, he suspects. Must be a front for something. Fraud is in the air.

“Interesting.”

“Really?” Graham brightens. “Hey if you look into it, let me know what you find, alright? Been trying to get a res online but can’t find the darned website. Don’t think they have one.”

“I’m sure I’ll have an address by the end of the day,” Sherlock says wryly, “and then you can march right in to interrogate them about reservations yourself.”


	12. it's a date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> afghasgdja thank you everyone who’s been commenting - I’m v glad that the very self indulgent idea I set out to write has turned into something that other people are enjoying too. words cannot express my asdhlasjdkas-ness

Sherlock taps away on no fewer than five laptops simultaneously.

"You know where are these things now called 'tabs,' Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson says unhelpfully.

"Yes," Sherlock says anyway, just to appease her. There was no use explaining to someone of her generation. Much like Mycroft, she still hadn't gotten the hang of texting.

Tabs did not come with their own VPNs and the placement of each laptop in a position corresponding its global geography was a nifty visual trick. 

This mysterious restaurant was indeed formidable. The net was abound with rumors and rave reviews since even before opening night - half of which must be fabricated - and it all traced back to one coded announcement.

Sherlock creates a fake Instagram account to follow this anonymous tastemaker. He frowns. A celebrity? Pop star? One of those "models" whose chief asset was their number of followers? Perhaps the proprietors had paid to be featured on said starlet's social media posts.

By some accounts, this restaurant was open sporadically and by all accounts a horribly inconvenient place to dine. Chef must be one of those ego driven megalomaniacs then, who thought their time and vision bounds more important than some plebeian diner's. 

There was something incredibly buzzy going on, Sherlock realizes, even moreso than usual in the quote-unquote foodie world. They'd managed to draw interest from other groups as well, but Sherlock has yet to deduce the common thread. 

There was just something incredibly  _ convincing _ about it all. Before he realizes, he finds his fingers twitching, phone already in hand, ready to dial the restaurant's number. 

Sherlock frowns. 

He pulls up his messages instead. Something about this ad campaign reminded him of something he did not want to be reminded of.

Sherlock opens his text thread with his older brother and scrolls up a bit, to one week ago. He'd asked when his ride would arrive - their usual monthly visit to Sherrinford - and Mycroft had said Eurus wasn't up to it.

Of course, Sherlock demanded answers. Mycroft ignored him. He then managed to corner that assistant of his, who said he was at an important meeting in Geneva.

Sherlock fumes, remembering the easy way Mycroft had brushed him off. See if he ever helps solve one of his boring cases again! 

Mycroft. Ugh.

He could call his brother and know everything he wanted about the restaurant in two minutes, first because it seemed like the sort of thing Mycroft indulged in, and second because Mycroft would have access to the permits. Though Sherlock could go down to the Buildings offices and try to finagle his way in himself. Yes, that was preferable to asking a favor.

.

Sherlock pools into a puddle on the rug as he slides out of his armchair due to sheer boredom, laptop barely balanced on his abdomen. 

The permit investigation results are expected if disappointing. The restaurant is merely a celebrity chef’s new venture, funded by a hedge fund friend. He knows this not because any food publication has done an exciting expose on the topic, but because of his above average deduction skills that have traced the names on the documents through to companies held by such figures. And, cross referencing these clues with the secretive schedules of said chef and hedge fund friend, it was almost certain this was what was going on. Sherlock wants to snore, so conventional and tedious this is. It’s not worth sniffing out the address, in any case. 

Out of the vast and boundless goodness of his heart, Sherlock fumbles for his mobile from his jacket pocket and dials Lestrade from his puddle position to let him know not to bother. The decor would be intimidating, the plates would be small, and he’d feel so nervously out of place he wouldn’t be able to properly impress his date. It would only lead to him trying even harder to impress the next time around, meaning, ultimately, he would be spending less time fielding interesting cases for Sherlock.

“Sherlock, what’s up?” Lestrade answers the phone.

Odd. He sounds content. Optimistic.  _ Happy. _

Sherlock shoots up on his feet.

“You got in,” he deduces.

He’s correct - of course he is. Not long after Sherlock had left Lestrade’s office to conduct the investigation, Gavin’s call had gone through and he was able to make his little reservation. 

He hangs up on Lestrade mid-sentence, uninterested in the woman he’s dating. He dials the number himself. The line’s busy.

Something nags at him; and not just the fact that Lestrade now has an invitation into an establishment Sherlock can’t even find the name of. 

His phone pings with a text, and he looks down to find a text from Lestrade.

_ No! Don’t show up on my date! I won’t have you scaring away another one. _

Sherlock deletes the text, and sends his reply posthaste:

_ Be ready by 8, I’ll meet you outside NSY. SH  _


	13. dead

Eurus receives a hilarious reservation and takes a moment to consider how to best break the possibly shocking news to Mycroft.

She settles for bursting into his kitchen and yelling at the top of her lungs.

“GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER,” she says, as Mycroft jumps (and possibly squeaks, she can’t confirm it firsthand but if she hadn’t been yelling she’s sure she would have heard it).

Mycroft huffs a moment later, smoothing down his white chef’s jacket and patting the little blue lizard on his shoulder to console it. 

“There, there, Lygo, don’t be alarmed,” he says in a much-affected voice.

“Amazing!” Eurus exclaims with false cheer. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get less cool.”

He’s named the poor stupid lizard after its scientific name, apparently. How very much like her uncool eldest brother. Lygodactylus williamsi, the electric blue gecko, also known as William’s gecko. Eurus wonders if Mycroft knew when he decided to pick up the little thing as a pet, and whether he was purposely avoiding any link to William Sherlock Scott Holmes. Boy was he in for a fun surprised when she revealed the guests of honor tonight then.

“The scientific name, Mycroft, really? Rue the day the gecko met you, and bound its fate to someone as nerdy as you are. I bet it regrets ever getting captured,” Eurus says. Mycroft frowns like an old disapproving headmistress at her (she assumes. She never got to live out the quintessential boarding school experience all proper heroines had, and she blames this on Sherlock, for making a fuss about the redhead). 

To her utter dismay, Mycroft continues cooing at the little reptile, perfectly unconcerned with Eurus. 

“Auntie Eurus didn’t  _ mean it _ ,” he simpers. She very well did!

“We aren’t related,” she snaps, eyes on the dumb blue thing.

“Ah,” Mycroft says sadly, still talking to the lizard instead of her. “Disinherited already.”

“D-disinherited!” Eurus can’t help but laugh, and it’s bitter, if only for a moment, before it turns loud and amused and then cut off abruptly. 

“What inheritance,” she says darkly. “Legally, I’m dead.”

Well that soured everyone’s mood.

Eurus had never said anything to that effect. In the moment, she’s not sure she’s ever thought it - of course she  _ knew, _ and understood, intellectually, that she was deceased on paper - but perhaps she’s never thought it in these exact terms.

Or maybe she did, but just hadn’t ever spoken them out loud.

Mycroft’s stunned silent, jaw fallen, and Eurus fumes internally that her personal, emotional outburst has outstaged the news she had planned to reveal. This certainly isn’t a topic she has broached with Mycroft before. 

Ugh! Imagine if he thought her hurt and upset. He must be doing backflips, mentally, to discern the best way to console  _ her. _ Disgusting. It was the last thing she wanted.

Confused by her own feelings, Eurus turns on her heel to storm out the kitchen.


	14. protagonist

Eurus plucks at the open strings on her violin, musing on the turn of events.

Mycroft hadn’t chased after her, and she is surprised she feels some relief at that. She makes a face - likely Mycroft was the same way. How she loathes realizing similarities between her and her least favorite brother! 

And then there was this wildcard: Sherlock’s old buddy, DI Silver Fox, was to be in attendance tonight. Sherlock was inevitably going to crash his date and tag along. A table for three, with a violin serenade.

Up until now Eurus had been deliberate about keeping away those who might expose her or Mycroft in their positions and end the entertaining little charade they had operating to a tune - but this was a friend of Sherlock’s she’d yet to meet.

She’s curious!

And besides, her trafficking business was on solid ground. She had so many countries and governments in her pocket there was no bringing her down. She could afford a little risk. (Plus, she had gotten tired of peddling expensive and unethically sourced eyecream. It smelled.)

She plucks a sour chord, sulking over outburst with Mycroft. She’s not fond of revealing herself, and decides that rather than feeling sad about her behavior and experience, she will choose to take it out on her older brother (that’s what they’re for) and be angry at him. 

Fine!, she thinks, let him find out for himself!

.

Mycroft feels guilty for a spell, but his unwillingness to go after Eurus far, far outweighs any guilt he feels and he decides to stay put in the safe solitude of his kitchen. He’ll take comfort over embarrassment any day. 

Instead, he preps his fingerling potatoes with piquillo pepper and kalamata olives, and chars the beautiful sugar snap peas he just bought. He contemplates a tempura dish, remembering the miso he has on hand, and decides against it as he deals with the Spanish octopus.

It is blissfully easy to lose himself in the cooking, what with all the fragrant flavors Mycroft is working with. He ends up making a miso-honey avocado dish with daikon, bok choy, and black truffle. He cooks up a wagyu bavette. He whips some ricotta and drizzles on black pepper vinaigrette, then decides to pile on shavings of the beautifully aged parmesan he had been saving and garnishes it with the freshest of herbs.

It’s a very decadent menu tonight.

Mycroft looks up, a bit hungry himself, and realizes he’s made too much.

.

Greg Lestrade slumps a bit in his throne-like seat, ever so slightly perturbed at the discovery the ornate arms on the piece of furniture, eyes darting between his two dinner mates.

His eyes say,  _ I’m so sorry, Maria, I had nothing to do with this tall giant baby of a freelancer barging in on our date. _ The pretty brunette smiles back, but it’s strained. Their unwanted dinner guest is craning his neck around, thunderous expression alone making a scene. 

“The avocado salad is amazing,” Maria says, angling the plate towards Lestrade as an offer. Better to focus on the food, which was truly as amazing as the rumors promised, as a reminder that they were in the most talked about restaurant in the city. She stole some of the appetizer Greg had been served, which they didn’t order, and almost forgot about how Sherlock Holmes and threw himself into the passenger seat of the car, forcing her to sit in the back as Greg chauffeured the consultant to dinner during his own date. 

Sherlock had then proceeded to whip out a magnifying glass to inspect the restaurant upon arrival and grill the staff regarding the owner’s whereabouts and press for a meeting with the chef.

He wasn’t even  _ eating. _

No, he just mashed around his ricotta and snapeas into an unflattering puddle and scowled. 

“I want to see the chef,” he says, sitting up with a sniff, as the waitress with the pink pixie cut pops by.

The waitress smirks. “Sure.”

Sherlock frowns realizing he’s missed something, but unable to place what.

Lestrade make a valiant attempt to ignore him completely and turns to Maria for some strained conversation instead.

A moment later, Lestrade looks up to find Mycroft Holmes.

“Oh,” he says, blinking a bit as his brain catches up. “Hello.”

Sherlock’s jaw has meanwhile dropped. 

Then there is lots of yelling.

..

The restaurant had ceased to be a sanctuary the moment Sherlock set foot in it, but even knowing this, Mycroft retreats quickly to his kitchen. 

Sherlock doesn’t let up for a moment, hot on his heels and interrogating before the kitchen doors fully swing shut. 

Mycroft brushes off the questions, and shrugs off the accusations, but then Sherlock makes a demand, claims he’s owed an explanation, he’s owed this and that.

“I don’t owe you  _ anything,” _ Mycroft manages to get out, almost in a gasp. He’s shocked by how shocked he is that he’s able to say this. Sherlock, for his part, is shocked silent. It’s new. For both of them.

There is a very long, speechless pause as the two of them attempt to process this situation. 

Eurus, having never shown her brothers any sympathy, pokes her head into the kitchen just as the silence reaches the crest of awkwardness, before it can settle nicely into the valley of silent understanding instead.

“What’s up?” she says, an ugly pink wig on her head. Mycroft wrinkles his nose distastefully, and she ignores it. “Are you guys done with your cinematic heart to heart? Good. Now pay attention to me.”

Sherlock gawks at her, and Mycroft realizes the neon wig was meant to be a disguise - and a successful one at that. 

“What?” she sniffs, turning her nose up at Sherlock’s reaction. “It’s my turn now to be the protagonist. You’ve had your turn, Sherlock.”


	15. olive branch

Eurus stares imperiously down at the tiny cub, some endangered mountain lion species she’s about to ship off to the Americas. Truth be told, she’s not partial to animals, and has no wish to take care of a whiny baby. But Mycroft looks so villainous with his exotic living accessory that Eurus is tempted to borrow the cub for a few hours as she faces off with him in a dim room with big leather armchairs, conversation full of veiled threats. Anything he could do, she could do better, is the point.

She drops the canvas cover back over the cage. No, Mycroft would likely cry. She doesn’t even need to bring a kitten around to intimidate him.

.

Mycroft pounds away at the garlic and grates the ginger separately into a fine shred. 

“You have the gall, the  _ nerve _ to demand I cater to your - your  _ dinner party _ and you won’t even tell me who you’ve invited?” he says with a sniff. Then he mutters, “after seeing how the  _ last one _ turned out.”

“Think,” she says sardonically. “I know you aren’t  _ that _ slow.”

Mycroft’s only response is some loud mashing of the toasted garlic.

“Are you  _ crying?” _ Eurus asks, incredulous. Sherlock had barely stayed ten minutes! 

“It’s the onions!” Mycroft snaps, running his sleeve over his face, and stomping over to the stove.

“That’s garlic,” Eurus calls after him. 

.

The family dinner is as painfully disastrous as Mycroft imagined. There’s no yelling or throwing of plates - they’re civilized, after all, but it’s deathly quiet and Mycroft wishes he could choke on the cauliflower puree and relinquish consciousness for the events. 

Sherlock, to his far left, makes a strangled sound. His dish was extra spicy, and the swelling of the tongue is no doubt adding to the silence.

Mummy has placed the blame squarely on Mycroft - obviously. But he is old enough to understand the value of making amends. Venting his petty emotions won’t feel satisfactory for more than a few moments (and maybe not even those, given the effort he’d have to muster up to vent them). He pushes the puree around the dish, sullen. And it’s true. Running away to open a restaurant without telling a soul wasn’t very responsible of him, was it. He hadn’t even called a housesitter.

“Mycroft’s not a perfect brother,” Eurus says, “but he does buy me Christmas presents.”

“And I appreciate the effort,” she adds (she’s lying, but the parents buy it). “But - I need my space. Mycroft’s the one who enjoys familial support, not me.”

She shrugs in a breezy way and takes another bite of the butternut squash ravioli. 

“Think of it as, oh I don’t know, a feral child situation. I’ll be returning to the jungle,” she says merrily.

“You weren’t raised by wolves!” Mummy exclaims; she’s aghast, all pearl-clutching and everything. Maybe she will faint - oh, the thought of her daughter all out there on her own. 

Eurus doesn’t care, or, more accurately, doesn’t notice. She is thinking about wolves - she knows there is no money in trafficking those. But oh - there was a report of a werewolf sighting on that message board. Maybe she would check it out.

Eurus Holmes, werewolf hunter. Yes, that was protagonist-worthy. A much cooler job than consulting detective.

She’d forgotten what she’d been saying, but looks to find, luckily, that Mummy’s taken to fussing over Mycroft instead. She knew bringing him as cannon fodder would be a good idea. 

That reminded her - she needed a sidekick. Mycroft was much too laconic for the type. Sherlock would only slow her down; long legs didn’t count for much if they were running the wrong way. She’d met a nice woman the other day, after the soup, but it wouldn’t have made for a good work relationship, they were too similar.

She turns to Sherlock, who’s still sore about his tongue.

“How do you make friends?” she asks. She assumed if she followed the steps right up before the actual “friendship” point it would be close enough to nab a sidekick,

His eyebrows climb in momentary surprise - then pity, which he tries to mask, and confusion, which he coughs away. She refrains from rolling her eyes (er. Mycroft was rubbing off on her). He thought she was  _ lonely, _ her sappy fool of a brother. No wonder Jim shot himself rather than become penpals. The Woman ran too. Ah no - she was getting sidetracked again.

“You - um.” Sherlock seems to be having trouble. Drat. for all the friends he did have, did he really not know?? How had this bumbling creature managed to get this far through life? Eurus, with her lack of social skills, at least had an excuse! She’d been in solitary confinement!

“I’ll ask someone else,” Eurus says.

“I could introduce you to someone,” Sherlock blurts.

That aging DI? No thanks. She didn’t need  _ that _ sort of sidekick. Though maybe his sergeant would do. They’d begin with a row - that was standard fare for loyal team ups. Barring that, she could butt heads with the top werewolf hunter. Who was that, anyway? And where was dessert?

.

Just as Mycroft predicted, once Mummy had said her piece without interruption she’d moved on quickly to other topics.

“You should call your brother more often,” she chastises.

“Yes, Mummy,” Mycroft says with a sigh, ignoring the fact that nine out of ten of his calls to Sherlock went ignored.

“And eat a vegetable! Mycroft, really, look at your complexion.”

Mycroft decides if he sighs every time he feels like it, he will deflate to nothing by the end of dinner. Then he has an idea - one so incandescent it’s as if a light bulb’s gone off over his head.

“You know,” he says, falsely nonchalant as he spears an heirloom carrot, “I hear Japanese algae does wonders for your skin. I’ve a membership at a spa and an open Tuesday.”

Mummy takes to the bait spectacularly, and Mycroft wonders why he hadn’t thought of this before. So many blustering, naggy Eastern European officials were so difficult to deal with but so easy once bribed. Mummy wasn’t much different, was she! He’s smug at his clever realization.

Eurus catches his attention and rolls her eyes in a dramatic impression of him. He did  _ not _ look  _ that _ surly. And he absolutely does  _ not _ feel the urge to smile at this small and surprisingly palatable family reconciliation.

.

Eurus wonders whether Mycroft, when he wakes up tomorrow, will be mad to find she has sold the restaurant, for a different piece of real estate. It’s a lovely Edwardian mansion that’s run down just enough to pass for a haunted castle in a storm. A classic heroine setting if there ever was one. 


	16. a teeny, minuscule epilogue of sorts

Mycroft frowns at the news playing a clip of the aftermath of a London fire; no deaths or injuries, happened in the dead of night, and the interiors were very cleanly destroyed beyond recognition. 

His once beloved restaurant had met a charred end, and, surprisingly, Mycroft doesn't feel at all regretful. He feels...even relieved, just a little, that there is no evidence of his (mid-life crisis) holiday.

He picks up a phone to fire off a text to a number saved in his contacts as a florist.

"Why a restaurant?" he asks.

The message is registered as read a few seconds later, but no answer is forthcoming.

"You implied it was because I enjoy cooking, but we both know you are not nearly so considerate," he adds.

The moving ellipsis shows his sister is typing, and then Mycroft receives a response that shows she is using voice to text rather than typing. That she is driving, and Eurus has no business being behind a wheel. He presses a hand over his heart for any poor unsuspecting citizens who might be on the road in her proximity.

"I'd come to the conclusion that foodies are among the worst people in the world. If I will be taking money from anyone, it should be from people I hate, shouldn't it? Aren't you proud of ME brother dear, that I have learned to hate. That's one of your silly emotions, isn't it?"

Mycroft frowns.

"Cynical view of business, and no, clearly you are confusing me for your other brother."

He sends that one off rather quickly, reminded unpleasantly of how chilling it is to converse with Eurus, who knows all your soft spots, and cannot help but jab. 

"I spent the good part of my formative years in prison."

For Eurus, this is a good mood. Mycroft sets his phone down, rolling his eyes, knowing he won't receive any further response, and knowing better to ask where she is. Somewhere out on some freeway or speeding along a country road, he suspects a sim card is being tossed out a window of a high speed vehicle to be crushed underway. 


End file.
